


Chlorine and Gold

by wyvernwood



Category: Chronicles of Amber - Roger Zelazny, House of Sulfur and Mercury (Chronicles of Amber fanfiction)
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Gen, Invented pronouns, Jasrin is what Luke | Rinaldo is calling himself, M/M, Other, Recursive Fanfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2020-01-06 04:53:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18381347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wyvernwood/pseuds/wyvernwood
Summary: Fanfiction of House of Sulfur and Mercury by the_rck - direct sequel toSurprised by the Hard AirGale eventually decides to go to Corwin's Shadow, meet up with the man, now calling himself Jasrin, who was the current version of Gale's father, and try to find out what exactly Mom and Dad had been talking about at the meeting that took place in "Surprised by the Hard Air."  The story isn't entirely factual, but it's what Jasrin remembers, and it's what he tells Gale.





	Chlorine and Gold

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Surprised By the Hard Air](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16698640) by [the_rck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_rck/pseuds/the_rck). 



The cats in Jasrin’s house weren’t really cats. They acted a lot like cats, they looked exactly like cats, but they were omnivores and lived almost a century, and had only one kitten at a time, infrequently. They were also, Gale suspected, more intelligent. The two sitting in in the window seat were called Blanche and Marron, for their fur colors, mostly. 

Gale liked Marron better, because he was friendlier to zan. Blanche would bat at Werewindle, but not let Gale pet her, and za wasn’t ever sure why. Blanche and Marron were both equally snuggly with Jasrin.

It was about a week after Gale and Jasrin had met with Merlin. Gale had been arguing with zanself for most of that time about whether or not to ever mention it again for zans entire life, because that would be the easiest thing. But something about doing that gave zan pause, as if it was going to leave zan walking over a plain full of sinkholes with no map or guide.

They were zans parents. Who they were, what they’d done, it was part of zan whether za liked it or not (and za didn’t much like it).

“You said something about me asking.” Za was walking around, pacing really, and Jasrin looked up from where he was sitting on one of the sofas, one foot propped on the other knee.

“Did I?” 

“You told Mom I didn’t ask.” Best to be direct.

“Does that mean you’re asking now?” 

“I think I have to,” za admitted. “No, I’m not sure I really want to know. But I think I need to.”

“You might,” Jasrin said. “Or you might not. I hoped you wouldn’t.”

Gale tightened zans hand on Werewindle’s hilt. The sword seemed to respond. 

Jasrin’s eyes took it in. “When we met, I’d been trying to kill him for years, but not especially hard. I was enjoying being away from home. If I succeeded… I wouldn’t have as good an excuse to stay where I was. We hit it off right away.”

Gale hadn’t expected quite such a beginning. But za ought to let Jasrin tell it the way he wanted, and it wasn’t like they didn’t have enough time.

“Our relationship was always about competition. Who was faster, stronger, had more money… “ He glanced at Gale. “When we started having sex, it was about competition too. In that shadow… Corwin had lived there a long time. Amber ways had sunk in to an extent, and there was a -- it was considered lesser, between two men, to want to be the one being fucked. So we’d kiss, and then fight, and the winner would fuck the loser. 

“We were always evenly matched, and who won was hard to predict. To me it almost didn’t matter. I think I enjoyed it no matter what. I liked beating him, and I liked him beating me, and I liked fucking him and him fucking me -- but we both had girlfriends, so we didn’t do it all that often. And we never admitted we had done it at all. We never talked about it, not even once.

“There was a lot of assuming things about each other. We lied all the time, about everything, pretending not to be who we were. I knew, and he didn’t, but I thought he knew too, and was lying about it. I thought it was obvious. 

“Then he found out, and I had to make sure he wouldn’t mess things up, but I wanted … I think I wanted to protect him. But maybe not. Maybe I just wanted to win. We were really competitive. And then my mother… 

“I’d trapped him, and she took him home and trapped him even worse. She started using the mind holds he had… I hadn’t even realized it was something you could do, and she had done it to me, too, I think. Maybe even to my father, though he was dead when I was so young there was no way I would have been able to find that out.

“I didn’t understand and I thought… it was like when we were competing, but I’d sort of permanently won. I thought it would be just fine to fuck whenever I wanted, that he would -- enjoy it, like I had when he won those times. I should have known better…

“Given how he couldn’t fight back. Given how he was getting more and more messed up by the whole situation. I don’t think he was -- I don’t think it made him a different person, but I think it made him a worse version of the same person. Much worse.

“At the time, though, I was just infatuated with him, and it makes it hard to really see a person when you feel that way. Is that why you need to know now, Gale?”

Gale had thought it was listen-to-the-story time, and wasn’t expecting to have to answer. “Are you asking about my personal life?” Jasrin never asked about anyone’s romantic entanglements. 

“You don’t have to tell me.” Jasrin smiled. “Idle curiosity. 

“There was a lot I could have done to help Merlin lose less of himself while my mother had him captive. I didn’t see it at the time. Merlin isn’t like most people. His reactions -- how he changed -- it wasn’t how most people would have changed. I understand him a lot better after getting to know the constructs.” Jasrin paused. “Ariyus?”

“Yes?” Ariyus’s voice came out of thin air, as usual.

“Can you ask Ghostwheel not to listen to us for a while? There are things I should tell Gale that I won’t be able to if he’s listening.”

“I can ask Ghostwheel not to listen to you until I tell him you have finished.” Ariyus agreed to this readily.

Gale was amused. If Ghostwheel had been listening, he would have heard the request himself. But the amusement faded quickly. Zans father didn’t expect Ghostwheel to do anything he asked himself. Za saw more significance in this than usual, in this conversation.

“Tell me when he stops listening,” Jasrin said. “Thank you, Ariyus.”

He waited, but Ariyus didn’t say anything right away. 

“I don’t understand why Ghostwheel shouldn’t listen?” Gale said, or asked, za wasn’t sure. “Wasn’t he there? He already knows.”

“I spent a lot of time keeping myself from remembering a lot of this, Gale. I reconstructed it, or remembered it, or both, and yes -- Ghostwheel was there. He knows. He didn’t understand, but he saw, and recorded. He helped me recreate the memories that I was missing.” Jasrin’s body trembled, or shuddered, something like that. A physical reaction to a thought.

“A lot of it I remember now as if it happened to somebody else. And in a way, it did. But my memory is of literally watching the scene, so I know it’s probably something Ghostwheel showed me that I’d forgotten. And some of it, I remember more than one way. A few things I remember three different ways. I want to tell you -- how I see it.”

“Ghostwheel isn’t listening now,” Ariyus said.

“What I don’t want is Ghostwheel deciding I lied to you because he remembers it differently. You can ask him whatever you want, of course. I’d rather you don’t. But you can.” Blanche rose, and stretched, then hopped down from the window seat and up onto Jasrin’s lap. He petted her between her shoulder blades.

“Most people are soft, all the way through. Tough, maybe. Able to take a lot without collapsing. But soft, and eventually, with enough time, enough trouble, gone or changed into someone or something else. But Merlin -- has a crystal core to his nature, that can’t -- or won’t -- change. It’s how he resisted his mother’s manipulation, I think. It’s how I failed so hard to understand him, too. And it’s how he got pared down to just that core, that crystal, and nothing else, none of what made him … soft. He and Ghostwheel are so much alike.” Jasrin’s hands were still shaking as he petted Blanche, but his voice was steady, though less expressive than usual. As though less of him was there, it seemed like.

“Dad,” Gale said. “I don’t ...” Za was about to say “understand,” but za didn’t want Jasrin to try to explain more, so didn’t say it. “I don’t think I need to know that part. Just -- what did you mean when you said you put your hand in a woodchipper? Was it something Mom did, or Ghostwheel?”

“It’s something I did,” Jasrin said. “I missed Merlin after I let him go, and I went to him and asked him to -- punish me for hurting him. Or take his revenge, or however I phrased it. I don’t want to ask Ghostwheel exactly what I said.

“You remember I said we were evenly matched. That’s when we were both in the same condition. Merlin wanted to be sure to win, so Ghostwheel put me somewhere that had no light, no food, no heat, nowhere to sleep or rest. Flashing lights once in a while, and some water -- it just made it colder, but I could lick it off the floor if I was desperately thirsty enough. Merlin shapeshifted so he could see in the dark, and waited till I was exhausted and weak, and he always won. 

“And I was there for I don’t know how long. I didn’t want Ghostwheel to tell me. A few rest breaks and back I went. I think they were trying not to kill me, but come as close as they could. I got sick. I’d never been sick. We don’t _get_ sick. 

“After long enough like that, nothing was that bad if it was in a room with light and heat and I had eaten in the last day or two.” Jasrin shook his head. His fingers tightened in Blanche’s fur, and she jumped off and glared at him. “That isn’t true. It was that bad. It just wasn’t the worst thing.”

Gale felt sick. Za wasn’t sure za wanted to listen to any more.

“You weren’t born yet. Ariyus wasn’t, either.”

“Mom said za would only have three children if it wasn’t for you,” Gale remembered.

“Ghostwheel, Clayre, and Gramble,” Jasrin listed. “I gave him the idea for Ariyus. And once he’d made you,” he said to a point in the air that Ariyus’s last words had seemed to come from, “he knew he could make more, and he wanted to.” 

“Why didn’t Mom want Clayre and Gramble?” Gale asked. 

“At first, I didn’t want to have children with Merlin either,” Jasrin said. “I don’t think I did. I had a lot of trouble wanting things at that point. I’d lost any ability to compete -- Merlin didn’t want me to lose that, but he didn’t want me to ever win, and that was what that made me do. And when I lost the competitiveness, I lost all my interest in sex, too. They were tied together too tightly.”

Gale was surprised. Za didn’t want to know more about this either, but at the same time, za knew, was pretty sure, this wasn’t true at all. “We weren’t supposed to know, but we knew anyway. About you -- Mom and you -- Martin too --”

“I don’t think I should talk about Martin.” Jasrin shook his head. “He’s not your parent and he’s not really relevant.”

“I mean, you didn’t stop sex.”

“I lost interest in it, I didn’t stop doing it. I didn’t have any say over what I did in that regard. That part -- that was what I’d done to Merlin, too. And what Ghostwheel did to me, was his version of my trying to kill my uncles for revenge for my own father, I suppose. I shouldn’t have let them. I don’t know if I could have stopped them, but I didn’t try. I asked for it. That’s why I don’t want any retribution, I suppose. There’s no point in going back and forth forever.” Jasrin barely managed to smile this time. “Maybe in another few hundred years, I’ll feel differently. If any of that comes back to me, I think Corwin will understand.

“I don’t think it ever will.”

Gale really didn’t want to know the answer to zans next question. “Have you ever got back the ability to enjoy sex?”

Jasrin shook his head. “No. I’ve tried a few times, every fifty or sixty years. Just to see if there’s anything. Plenty of interest on the parts of … oh, all sorts of options I have. But it’s still nothing.”

“And wanting to compete? To win?”

“None of that either. Maybe they’ll come back together, if either one ever does.” Jasrin looked out the window. “Maybe all of it would come back together - wanting sex, wanting to win, wanting revenge.”

“Ghostwheel will start listening again soon,” Ariyus said from a different direction than the last time. 

“Is it enough?” Jasrin asked.

Gale wasn’t sure. Za shrugged. “You answered the question I had. I think there are a bunch of new ones now. But they can wait.” Za considered how much za would share of this with zans other siblings. With some of them, za decided. And only when they asked. “You really don’t think I should know about whatever it was with Martin?”

“I don’t want to tell you about Martin,” Jasrin said. “I don’t feel like I have to, or owe it to you. Maybe you should know, but you’ll have to find out from someone else.”

Gale wondered why za felt rebuffed at this answer. 

“Ghostwheel is listening now,” Ariyus said.

“Thank you, Ariyus.” Jasrin stood up. “Stay as long as you like, Gale. I’m going to retire for the night.”

“Goodnight, Dad.” It was barely dark outside. Gale remained sitting, watching Marron playing with a scrap of paper by the window.

Once Jasrin had left, za said, “I don’t appreciate that, Ghostwheel.”

Ghostwheel appeared in a small spinning white circle. “I watch out for you, Gale. You appreciate it.”

“Dad and I were talking and it was private. You were supposed to stay out till Ariyus told you we were done.” 

“It was long enough. Jasrin is not stable or safe. There is a small chance he would not be safe for you to be around if you brought up certain subjects.” Ghostwheel was perfectly right about this, not that it mattered to Gale.

“Ariyus could get you if I had needed you. I have Werewindle. There is not even a small chance anything permanent could have happened to me.” Gale was not delusional, but was willing to take an infinitesimal risk to learn what za needed to.

“Would you like me to show you the scenarios? I told Ariyus I would return when the percentage chance of their occurrence reached one in fifty thousand.” Ghostwheel spun up a projection Trump in the air. Marron and Blanche looked at it, and reacted. Blanche hissed, her fur standing on end. Marron ran and hid in a closed part of one of the cat trees.

“Stop scaring the animals. No, I don’t want to see the scenarios.” Gale looked at Ghostwheel’s wheel avatar, waving a dismissive hand in the direction of the disappearing Trump projection. “I’m with Dad. It’s a good night to get a lot of sleep.” Za paused at the stairs up to the guest bedroom za used when staying over. “You can watch me sleep if you want. Make sure I’m safe.” 

“I will.” Ghostwheel and Ariyus answered almost simultaneously. Gale laughed and went to bed.


End file.
